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Summary for Sociology of Arts & Culture (CC1003)
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This summary uses the lectures and required readings for Sociology of Arts & Culture at Erasmus University.
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SOCIOLOGY OF ARTS & CULTUREWEEK 1
- General sociology
- Etymology
- Socius: companion
- Societas: society
- Logos: reason, laws
- Sociology is the science of social life and society
- Questions:
- What is social life/society?
- What is science? (I assume some familiarity with this topic)
- What is the sociological perspective on society?
- Why sociology as a scientific discipline?
- Social life/society
- The social:
- Set of direct and indirect relationships that people engage in
with each other at specific times and/or in specific contexts.
- Society:
- The complex network of all possible relationships that people or
groups of people enter with each other and maintain across
time and space.
- Thus, sociology studies:
- The different ways in which people relate to each other
- Both at specific times and in specific contexts
- And on a more general scale through time and space
- Study object of sociology are questions of society
- The way in which people live and the problems this entails
- Disciplinary reference problem:
- How is social order possible?
- Science
- Sociological knowledge is not common sense knowledge
- Sociological knowledge is scientific knowledge
- Knowledge acquired through scientific methods
- Interaction between:
- Sound and reliable empirical research
, - Theoretical models of explanation
- Sociology is poly-paradigmatic discipline
- Not one overarching theoretical framework, but several
- Macro-theories, middle range theories, micro-theories
- Sociology has different research traditions and research methods
- Quantitative vs. Qualitative research
- Sociology knows many sub-disciplines
- For outsiders, sociology seems to be a fragmented discipline
- Sociology is a relatively undervalued science
- Sociology is less prominent in society than, for example,
economics, political science, psychology…
- Possible reasons:
- Is not taught in high school: unknown
- Often inaccessible: jargon (sociologese), …
- Sociologists do not have their own professional field
- Discipline is too fragmented
- Findings from sociological research are often not popular
- Sociology is often considered to be a non-objective and
suspicious science
- Sociological view
- Thinking sociologically:
- A specific form of thinking and of perceiving social reality
- A critical approach of the social
- Sociology is about…
- Taking a step back
- Challenging the obvious
- Questioning the world as it is taken for granted
- Defamiliarizing the familiar
- Seeing the strange in the familiar
- Sociological imagination
- Imagination:
- Specific way of viewing reality
- Ostensibly personal events and individual behavior are framed
in and explained by wider social reality and processes
- Scientific study of the arts
- Humanities
- ‘View from the inside’
- The unique
- Analysis intrinsic, autonomous characteristics
, - Artistic quality is expression of genius of individual artist
- Sociology
- ‘View from the outside’
The general
- Analysis of the collective process of production, distribution,
and reception culture in a specific context
- Artistic quality is social construction (power)
- What are arts and culture? Part 1
- Definition;
- Culture is one of the most complicated words in the English
language
- Discussion on exact definition is fruitless, but:
- - Distinction between:
- Culture as a way of life
- Macionis and Plummer CH 5
- Culture as a form of artistic expression and communication
- Alexander
- What is art, according to Alexander?
- Artistic product
- Tangible, visible, or audible
- Communicates publicly
- Touched, seen, heard
- Experienced for enjoyment
- Pleasure, escape
- Expressive form
- Fictional, to some extent
- Art is defined by its context
- Physical and social
- “A work is art if people say it is” (H. Becker, 1982)
- Order;
- 1. Fine arts
- 2. Popular (mass) arts
- 3. Folk arts
- Excluded: popular (youth) culture, nonfiction media, etc.
- My art is better than your art
- This is art!
- But what if I told you…?
- It is a ready-made?
- Arts genre
, - I signed it!
- Creative artist
- I call the work ‘Untitled’? Never mind… I call it
‘whitewashing’?
- Concept
- I did receive an arts grant from the City of Rotterdam
- Institutional legitimation artist
- Stedelijk museum just bought it
- Institutional legitimation art
- What are arts and culture? Part 2
- Arts and culture is a social construction
- Highly context-dependent:
- Time: i.e. jazz/folk
- Institutional legitimation: urinal in museum
- Studying how distinctions are made in the art world
- i.e. between art and kitsch
- Kitsch: art, objects, or design considered to be in
poor taste because of excessive garishness or
sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an
ironic or knowing way.
- - Four approaches in sociology
- Positivism
- Interpretative sociology
- Critical sociology
- Postmodern sociology
- Positivism
- Founding father:
- Emile Durkheim
- Modeled after natural sciences
- Nomothetic knowledge: ‘laws’; ‘empiricism’
- Reductionist: ‘measurable variables’
- Often causal relationships
- Interpretative sociology
- Founding father:
- Max Weber
- Origin in hermeneutics
- Idiographic knowledge: ‘the particular’
- Holistic: meaning-making in situation as a whole
- Understanding rather than predicting
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